A research network supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation

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This forum will focus on the fundamental concepts of time and space in the construction of knowledge of and from Asia. While area studies continue the endeavors of knowledge production, its inevitably intricate connections with national histories and geographies are increasingly foregrounded. | Go to the forum

Forum 2: Uses of Culture and Cultural Heritage

This Forum addresses the modalities of cultural heritage production, its management and its reformulation in Asia. It explores the plurality of the notion of ‘heritage’ and its local variants, some of which depart significantly from European models because of powerful local religious, philosophical, conceptual, and political traditions. Three key questions take prominence: what kind of heritage is preserved, for whom, and through what process? The Forum will focus on vernacular knowledges as they are practiced in mainland Southeast Asia. | Go to the forum

Forum 3 - Asian Spatialities 1: The Indian Ocean World – Belonging across the Bay of Bengal

To overcome spatial limitations established by nations and empires, past and present, the Asian Spatialities Forum is concerned with flows, interactions, and community agency across seas and landmasses of Central, South, and Southeast Asia. This first sub-project in the Spatialities Studies Forum will focus on contested notions of belonging across the Bay of Bengal. | Go to the forum

To overcome spatial limitations established by nations and empires, past and present, the Asian Spatialities Forum is concerned with flows, interactions, and community agency across seas and landmasses of Central, South, and Southeast Asia. This second sub-project consists of two workshops that bring together local Asian scholars and external academics to address contemporary identity developments in Central and Inner Eurasia in the context of globalization. | Go to the forum

Forum 3 - Asian Spatialities 3: Across Southeast Asian Borderlands

To overcome spatial limitations established by nations and empires, past and present, the Asian Spatialities Forum is concerned with flows, interactions, and community agency across seas and landmasses of Central, South, and Southeast Asia. This third sub-project will study Southeast Asia on the basis of networks, processes, transitions, polyvalence, and fluidity, in opposition to the concepts of the ‘nation-state’ or the ‘region’ | Go to the forum

Forum 4: The Idea of the City in Asian Contexts

This Forum is based on the Urban Knowledge Network Asia (UKNA), an IIAS -led and EU co-funded programme of scholars working on Asian cities. Cities constitute distinct domains worth examining in both local and global contexts. They often share more characteristics with one another than with their own hinterland, and, being at the forefront of economic growth, Asian cities are being re-imagined everyday by their residents, commuters, immigrants, civil society groups, planners, politicians, business groups, and visitors. | Go to the forum

Forum 5: Views of Asia from Africa

Major changes are underway in the interaction between Asia and Africa, where a massive economic, political and demographic Chinese presence is rapidly transforming the terms of this interregional relationship. This Forum will be organised in collaboration with the Association of Asian Studies in Africa (A-ASIA) established in 2012 in Lusaka, Zambia. | Go to the forum